The fireman who broke SD's color barrier

In 1951, segregation was a sad fact of American life

“This was a heavy burden,” Ben Holman said of the day he agreed to become the first black fireman to integrate once all-white fire stations. “But I didn’t realize how heavy it would be.”
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

“This was a heavy burden,” Ben Holman said of the day he agreed to become the first black fireman to integrate once all-white fire stations. “But I didn’t realize how heavy it would be.”
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

In November 1951, San Diego’s fire chief sent a rookie firefighter to North Park’s Station 14.

“And that was it,” said that one-time rookie, Ben Holman, now 87. “The San Diego Fire Department was integrated.”

The story of how San Diego’s once all-white fire stations became colorblind, Holman admits, really isn’t this simple. Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holiday honoring the civil rights pioneer whose most notable campaigns occurred in the South. Yet racism and segregation were no strangers to Southern California.

Still, change was coming. Jackie Robinson had broken major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947. The next year, President Truman ordered the U.S. military’s integration. In 1951, though, San Diego remained among the many American cities with neighborhoods where blacks could not reside, restaurants they could not enter, jobs they could not fill.

That summer, Holman had breezed through the fire department’s written and physical exams. The young World War II veteran expected to be hired and sent to Mountain View, a mixed neighborhood east of downtown that was home to Mount Hope Cemetery, Greenwood Memorial Park and Station 19, the only place in the city where black firefighters were assigned. But in September, he was summoned to Chief George Courser’s office for a series of interviews. Courser quizzed Holman on his education, his work history, his experiences with whites.

Finally, the chief made up his mind. “Holman,” he said, “you are going to be my Jackie Robinson.”

The rookie agreed. “This was a heavy burden,” he said recently. “But I didn’t realize how heavy it would be.”

Standing firm

Alwin Benjamin Holman was born in Alton, Ill., a segregated city. Ben didn’t realize that fact for years, because his mother wouldn’t allow her son to grow up under the shadow of discrimination. Blacks couldn’t sip sodas at the counter in Alton’s drugstore, for instance, but she always deflected Ben’s pleas for a cold Coke. Money’s short. We have sodas at home. Anything but the real, racist reason.

So Holman grew up confident, easygoing — and patriotic. Enlisting in the Navy in 1944, he was shipped to San Diego in January ’45, where he displayed his common sense. “I took my peacoat off and never put it on again. No snow in the winter, no tornadoes in the spring, the summers were not too hot. Why would I ever go back to Illinois?”

He wouldn’t. He met and married Ruby Penn and, after the war, took a job in the post office. Then he noticed that the fire department steadily promoted its people — even its few black people.

The department had hired black firefighters since 1919, when Timothy Williams joined the force. (The first Mexican-American fireman, Alfredo Salazar, was hired a year earlier.) Other than Station 19, though, every fire station in town was manned exclusively by whites until 1951. Courser, who died 10 years later, never shared his reasoning with the rookie. But Holman believes the chief welcomed change — “He cared about people” — and figured he could ensure a smoother transition.